Reposted from American Thinker, May 10, 2013
The Faults, Fallacies and Failures of Wind Power
Viv Forbes
Wind power is not free. All natural energy resources such as coal, wind and sun appear “free” – no one has to incur costs to create them. But turning a “free” resource into usable electricity costs money for collecting, generating and distributing that energy. To consumers and tax payers, the real cost of wind power is very high, no matter how well it is hidden by politicians.
Wind power is not reliable. No one can make the wind blow when the energy is needed – in fact, wind farms produce, on average, less than 30% of their nameplate capacity, often at times of lower demand.
Wind power harms the environment. Because of the large area of land needed to collect low-density wind energy, wind power requires more land-clearing, needs more transmission lines, kills more wildlife, lights more bushfires and uglifies more landscape per unit of electricity than conventional power. And the subsonic whine of the turbines drives neighbours batty and devalues local properties.
Like hydro-power, wind power is limited, with few suitable sites. And every wind turbine slows the wind, thus reducing the wind energy available to any downwind turbines. It is “renewable’ but it is not unlimited.
Wind power is justified by claims that it reduces emissions and thus reduces global warming. However, when all the steel, concrete, construction, maintenance, replacement and rehabilitation are taken into account, wind power contributes nothing to reducing emissions or changing global climate.
However wind turbines DO change the local weather. Wind is the major component of weather. Winds bring moisture to the inland, clear pollution from the cities, and change air temperatures everywhere. Wind towers rob the wind of its energy, affecting local wind speeds and changing local weather patterns.
Wind power is an expensive, intermittent and limited energy source that degrades the environment, kills birds, affects the local weather but does nothing to improve global climate.
It should be paid for by those who want it, not by captive taxpayers or electricity consumers.
About stopthesethings
Just simply remove any subsidies and let the technology stand on it’s own two feet. If it is as good and efficient as we are told then fine……………………
They absolutely DO know the truth, and they are fighting tooth and nail to keep it hidden from the rest of the population…..problems is, the internet has allowed many reputable professional people, and real live victims, to tell the truth, which makes a hell of a lot more sense! No one but paid puppets of the wind industry, (including politicians), would believe the foolish lies told by the windpushers. Money has indeed blinded these miscreants!
Amazing how everyone but those supporting this industry, including governments and their advisers, knows the truth of what is written here. Logic is all that is needed realise the truth, but those supporters are deficient of it. Is it the innate ability of some to see the $ sign, before they look at the rational results of their decisions, to blame? I cannot rationalise myself why anyone would want to destroy what they say they want to protect, it just doesn’t make any sense.